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January 22, 2008

The week of January 21st in My Digital Life

The big news from the Macworld 2008 was the MacBook Air, another triumph for Apple's design team, Intel had a lot to do with this with one as well, making it possible to squeeze the processor board into the Air. Apple relationship with Intel has evolved to the point where they are willing to undertake what is essentially custom engineering for Apple. I wonder why other PC makers have not worked with Intel in this way, this is just another feather in Apple's cap. It is clear other PC makers are taking note and are offering more interesting design at a premium over their basic PC and laptops. The design game is clearly about charging a premium to consumers who need to have the look and feel. As with all Apple products the Air is no exception, starting at $1799 with a 4200RPM drive it is not going to be a screamer . Starting $3099 for the 64MB RAM disk should provide excellent performance, however this is too pricey for me. I have to say this could be the Mac I try (with bootcamp), however I am not willing to pay these prices. Hopefully prices will come down by the holiday season.

The other news was the update to the iPhone. Over the last year Apple has demonstrated their ability to incrementally update the iPhone without impacting the cellular networks contrary to all the previous claims by cellular carriers that they had to control updates to protect their networks. Apple also has demonstrated that you don't need to destroy the previous ROM image to perform an update. Although this is possible in Windows Mobile 6, neither Microsoft or the cellular carriers have chosen to use this method. This is pretty sad. The hackers have been close behind Apple's release to provide jailbreak code to unlock the iPhone. They seem to be very quick to unlock the latest version 1.1.3, however the semi organized group seems intent on waiting until the release of the iPhone SDK, before divulging their exploit. Their reason; they don't want Apple to build additional lock downs into the SDK. I guess I will have to live with 1.1.2 a while longer...On the Apple TV front, Steve Jobs admitted it was a flop. They have lowered the price, and updated the software so it the Apple TV unit is more autonomous (no need to make purchases through iTunes). It still only outputs 720p, I wished they would have upgraded to 1080p. You might as well buy an Xbox 360 with 1080p to stream videos...

Over the weekend Directv released a public bet of their web based scheduler. Although rudimentary (it does not handle conflicts) it is a very useful application and I have already used it several times. All you need to access the beta is have an HR20 or R15 DVR and an account on the directv web site.

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What you have to realize about the Apple TV is that it was never supposed to be a roaring success before. When it was announced last year, and in every Apple release I've heard since, the Apple TV was proposed as, well, a toy that would appeal to a few people.

Apple said it would have some sales, but not the huge number of other Apple products, That seems to be exactly what happened.

So was it a flop? I hardly think so. For one thing, as I said, it met expectations, but for another, every sale of the device was profitable for Apple.

Behind the scenes is where the real magic happened. Apple put the Apple TV out there while it focused on the iPhone and other lines, but all the while it was learning about how to improve the Apple TV. The device is now stronger based on this approach.

Now Apple is turning its attention to the Apple TV, and NOW we'll see whether it succeeds or not. I certainly have my criticisms of where Apple took it, but let's see.

If in a year's time Apple TV hasn't sold much then you'd have reason to label it as a flop, but so far it's been nothing but a small success.